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v. t. e. The Apocryphon of John, also called the Secret Book of John or the Secret Revelation of John, is a 2nd-century Sethian Gnostic Christian pseudepigraphical text attributed to John the Apostle. It is one of the texts addressed by Irenaeus in his Against Heresies, placing its composition before 180 AD.
The most important tractate of the Sethian version of Gnosticism is the Apocryphon (“Secret Book”) of John. 1 Versions of it are included in three of the Nag Hammadi codices (as well as in the Berlin Codex). In the Apocryphon of John, the risen Christ reveals secrets to his disciple John, son of Zebedee. A basic and somewhat elaborate myth ...
- Tobit, written 225-175 BCE. This book tells the story of two Israelite people, a blind man named Tobit living in Nineveh and a woman named Sarah, living in a city called Ecbatana.
- Judith, written about 100 BCE. Judith, a Jewish widow, attracts and seduces an Assyrian general besieging her city. Having ingratiated herself with him, she waits until he is drunk and then decapitates him, saving the capital Jerusalem from total destruction.
- Esther, written around 115 BCE. Although the Hebrew version of Esther is canonical, the Greek translation adds six sections to it. Esther is the story of an Israelite woman who saves her people from an anti-Israelite Persian plot.
- Wisdom of Solomon, written around 50 BCE. This book centers on the importance of Wisdom as related to humans and to God. It may have influenced the famous prologue of the Gospel of John, with wisdom replaced by the “Word.”
The Secret Book of John is a complex developmental mythology that has been made more complicated because, over the years, versions of it have been “improved” by several levels of scribal alteration. One set of levels is the evident addition of rather lengthy texts (a list of magical names, a dialogue on the soul, a providence hymn) to an ...
The Secret Book of John is the most significant and influential text of the ancient Gnostic religion. Written in Greek during the early second century CE by an unknown author, the Secret Book of John became the source of a host of other Gnostic texts, myths, and cosmic systems. In Greek its title is Apocryphon Johannis and it is known in ...
The Jewish apocrypha (Hebrew: הספרים החיצוניים, romanized: HaSefarim haChitzoniyim, lit. 'the outer books') are religious texts written in large part by Jews, especially during the Second Temple period, not accepted as sacred manuscripts when the Hebrew Bible was canonized. Some of these books are considered sacred in certain ...
Sep 17, 2024 · Gnosticism - Apocryphon, John, Beliefs: Until the 20th century the works of Irenaeus and other heresiologists (orthodox Christian writers who described unorthodox groups) were the principal sources of information about gnostic movements. Only a handful of manuscripts containing the authentic writings of such groups were known; they existed primarily in two sets of Coptic texts, the Askew Codex ...
